The New Structure of Labor Relations

Tripartism and Decentralization

Harry C. Katz, Wonduck Lee og Joohee Lee

Cornell University Press 2004 272 s. ISBN 0-8014-4184-6

Bogomtale fra forlaget.

Tripartism—the national-level interaction
among representatives of labor, management, and government—occurs infrequently
in the United States. Based on the U.S. experience, then, such interactions
might seem irrelevant to economic performance and policymaking. The essays in
this volume reveal the falsity of that assumption.

Contributors from
eight industrialized countries (Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan,
Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States) examine the changing nature of
labor-management relations, with a particular focus on the role of tripartism
and the decentralization of collective bargaining. Although nonexistent in the
United States and on the decline in Japan and Australia, tripartism flourishes
in Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands, expanding beyond traditional
corporatist partners to include women's organizations, senior citizens, and
other representatives of "civic society." The vibrancy of the coordinating
mechanisms that help shape employment conditions and labor policy contradicts
the traditional belief that an overpowering unilateral decentralizing shift is
underway in labor-management interactions. The contributors show that these
mechanisms are in fact increasing in the face of intensified pressures,
promoting greater flexibility in work organization and working
time.

Harry C. Katz is the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining and
Director of the Institute of Collective Bargaining in the School of Industrial
and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He is the coauthor of Converging
Divergences and coeditor of Rekindling the Movement, both from Cornell. Wonduck
Lee is President of the Korea Labor Institute. Joohee Lee is a Research Fellow
at the Korea Labor Institute.